The Sudanese government on Sunday held the United Nations responsible for the delay in implementing a peace accord which was signed by the government and a main rebel faction in the western Sudanese region of Darfur but was refused by other rebel groups.

"The UN has pledged to impose sanctions on the parties that did not sign the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), but it tended to reward them," Sudanese Presidential Advisor Magzoub Al-Khalifa told reporters after a meeting with representatives of the world body in Sudan.

Al-Khalifa said that the UN had dispersed the efforts to reach peace in Darfur through what it called the transfer of the peacekeeping mission from the African Union (AU) to the UN.

He said that Khartoum was exerting all its efforts to contact with the non-signatories of the DPA, adding that the contacts were conducted in the framework of the peace agreement without overstepping it or relaunching the negotiations on it.

The Sudanese government signed the AU-sponsored DPA with a main faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Mini Arkou Minawi in the Nigerian capital Abuja on May 5, and Minawi was sworn in as a senior assistant of the Sudanese president on Aug. 7.

Other rebel groups, including another SLM main faction led by Abu al-Wahed Mohammed al-Nour and the Justice and Equality Movement led by Khalil Ibrahim, have refused to sign the DPA, claiming that the agreement was unfair and did not meet all their demands.

(Xinhua News Agency November 27, 2006)